View From The Exterior

Serge Gainsbourg is synonymous with "Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus" on which he and Jane Birkin simulated the sounds of sexual congress. But this 1969 UK no. 1 was but a sideshow in an impressive career as a composer, novelist, film director and actor. The first full biography in English, Alan Clayson's book reveals the entire sordid story. Gainsbourg was an inlikely pop star and an even less likely lover of icons like Birkin, Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. But from humble beginnings he went on to write songs for Dionne Warwick and Sacha Distel. A natural at courting controversy, his outrages included a scandalous arrangement of "La Marseillaise" among songs on female masturbation, incest, Nazism, and, in 1988, a rapping ode to oral sex. He continued to be newsworthy the world over until his body's final rebellion at the age of 61, after a lifetime of violation.